While the Charlie Haden Liberation Music Orchestra was stranded in New York on Wednesday due to a flight snafu, The Bad Plus was a more than worthy substitute in Confederation Park on the TD Ottawa Jazz Festival’s main stage.

“Charlie Haden was a major influence on all three of us. We really considered him one of our guiding lights,” The Bad Plus’s bassist, Reid Anderson, announced midway through the band’s 75-minute set on behalf of his colleagues, pianist Ethan Iverson and drummer David King.

And with that the trio, which had been bumped from its NAC Studio booking to play the festival’s biggest outdoor venue, launched into a version of Ornette Coleman’s Law Years, which had featured Haden’s wide-roaming bass on the 1971 recording. Iverson did Haden proud with his solo intro.

That piece was one of many facets that the still-unique trio offered during its Ottawa set. While the egalitarian group was first pigeonholed in the early 2000s as that piano trio that dared to rock out on songs by Nirvana, Black Sabbath and Rush, it’s been far more eclectic. There was its embrace of not just Coleman’s music, but Stravinsky’s, too. And that’s not to mention its collaborations with figures as diverse as Joshua Redman, Kurt Rosenwinkel, Tim Berne and vocalist Wendy Lewis, or the always interesting, left-of-centre originals from all three members.

Drummer Dave King and The Bad Plus perform at the Ottawa Jazz Festival on June 28, 2017.

Pianist Ethan Iverson and The Bad Plus perform at the Ottawa Jazz Festival on June 28, 2017.

Pianist Ethan Iverson and The Bad Plus perform at the Ottawa Jazz Festival on June 28, 2017.

Drummer Dave King and The Bad Plus perform at the Ottawa Jazz Festival on June 28, 2017.

Bassist Reid Anderson and The Bad Plus perform at the Ottawa Jazz Festival on June 28, 2017. Jean Levac/Postmedia

The Confederation Park set drew upon music from throughout the group’s history, namely:

Prehensile Dream (Anderson) Wolf Out (King) Time After Time (Lauper) Cheney Piñata (Iverson) Neptune (The Planet) (Anderson) Law Years (Coleman) Do You Sums, Die Like A Dog, Play for Home (Iverson) Mandy (Manilow) County Seat (Iverson) Maps (Yeah Yeah Yeahs)

Encore: The Hymn (Parker)

Anderson’s Prehensile Dream was a sad, patient song of near classical purity that grew into something florid and then fell back to earth for an exquisite finish. Wolf Out was a rhythmically sinuous groover that was at once disorienting and hypnotic.

The trio put its stamp on Lauper’s Time After Time by stripping it down and tricking out its rhythms and harmonies, but not overly so. Later, a few laughs greeted the trio’s version of Mandy, which began pensively and ramped up into tumultuousness before its rocking conclusion drew applause. After, Anderson deadpanned that the band’s take was “sort of more like the original concept of the song, but then the corporate guys got involved.”

“Play more Manilow!” a listener quipped. The band did not.

With the loping quasi-mariachi of Cheney Piñata, The Bad Plus injected a bit of politics into the proceedings. When the song was done, Anderson gave it a 2017 spin with his announcement: “Now we call it Pence Piñata — whatever vice-president of the United States you disapprove of, you just put in front of the Piñata.”

Iverson’s hoedown-ready County Seat featured King’s most unhinged playing of the night. On Neptune (The Planet), Iverson added misterioso tinkling with his right hand while his left hand played the song’s theme.

Closing the set was a rumbling, clattering version of Maps by the indie rockers The Yeah Yeah Yeahs, which reminded that The Bad Plus had been the punk-spirited indie rockers of jazz in their early going.

In Confederation Park, the group received a standing ovation that capped a night-long warm reception, warmer than the night itself and much warmer than what the band received when it first played Confederation Park on a sweltering early July afternoon in 2004, when it was so far ahead of the curve.

Listeners have clearly caught up with The Bad Plus, perhaps because the trio has spawned so many like-minded younger bands. In any event, the next time the trio plays Ottawa, it will be fascinating to hear its further evolution, as Iverson is to leave the band at the end of 2016, to be replaced by pianist Orrin Evans.

***

Opening for The Bad Plus at 6:30 p.m. in the park was the Brooklyn-based group Red Hook Soul, which qualified for the festival’s Great Canadian Jazz Series by virtue of the fact that the band’s leader, saxophonist Michael Blake, is a Vancouver native.

This was a band that offered robust, booty-shaking versions of tunes by Taj Mahal (Chevrolet) and Gladys Knight (Nitty Gritty), among others, plus Blake’s kindred, groove-first originals (Second Line Hunchback). Although Black and some of his bandmates have top-tier jazz credentials — some have played with Bill Frisell and John Scofield — they stayed true to the rootsy earthiness of their material. Blake did step forward occasionally to uncork an extended and sophisticated solo, but it never detracted from the luxuriously grooving vibe that emanated from the stage.

The band could also turn the music down to an intoxicating simmer. The down-tempo Video Games cast a different spell from the percolating tunes that flanked it, and the encore, a version of Otis Redding’s I Love You More Than Words Can Say, found Blake appealing with toughness and tenderness.

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